☯️ Taoist teaching emphasises the importance of cultivating the connection with our heart and virtuous emotions such as love, kindness, compassion, honesty, etc. 💚 As you incorporate some form of spiritual practices in your life, you may feel the increased vital and spiritual energy which starts to improve all aspects of your being physically, emotionally and mentally. However, if you do not consciously and actively dedicate yourself to cultivate such virtuous energies within yourself and to connect with your heart, this accumulated energy can easily flood to your negative aspects of yourself and emotions. Negative aspects are your weakness, shadow, lack, or unhealed part of you, which can drive you to act in a certain way unconsciously. Therefore, if you are not healed, accumulated energy leads to exacerbation of those negative tendencies which you may have. 😖

For example, you may have experienced the increase of overall energy through spiritual practices. But if you do not make an effort to heal your shadow and weakness, you may unintentionally end up transferring all your accumulated energy to your shadow/darkness. Unconsciously you will put all your effort feeding your weakness and lack, where you feel most emotionally starved, through external sources such as money and other people. You may use your newly gained spiritual power and charisma to manipulate other people and use others as the means to satisfy your starving monster inside. We all do this, but if the person with high charisma or spiritually recognised status like gurus do this, the effect is much more harmful with more significant scale. 😱😱

Having a superpower does not mean they will use it to serve the others right. That’s why there are so many ‘fake’ gurus with a superpower who manipulate and try to keep their people/students powerlessness. Their people obey the guru, thus giving what a guru wants. Such 'fake' gurus may have completed unbelievable spiritual discipline, naturally gifted with a superpower or can lift themselves up from the ground against the gravity with their energy alone. But if they have not cultivated the virtue of compassion and also have not dedicated themselves to heal unleaded parts of themselves, they will continue to rely on external sources and people to feel empowered. And it is dangerous. People who do not believe their own power will immediately give their power away and depend on those gurus. 🙇‍ 🙇‍

I have come across a gifted healer who uses his power for sexual advancement, and a guru who is more concerned about their financial gain than teaching and caring for their students. On the contrary, I know many ‘ordinary’ people who are not interested in spiritualism or cannot lift themselves up from the ground with their energy. Still, they possess tremendous virtuous energies of compassion, love, happiness, joy, kindness, honesty, and modesty. Their presence and company simply make others happy in their day to day life. 😊

Real masters (gurus) remind you of the truth that you are the master of yourself. True masters remind you that you have the power within and teach us how to access our own power/love.

I feel lucky and honoured to have met such a master, Tzvika Calisar, who possess compassion and love, as well as dedication and passion for spreading Seiki Shiatsu to the world. Although he does not fit to an image of the stereotypical guru 😂, his heart can direct all his students to the path of love, compassion and healing (and I believe he has some kind of superpower). 💚☺️✨

Just to remind you again: as we become more and more awakened through spiritual practices, our own light becomes stronger and brighter, which leads us to the realisation of even stronger contrast of the opposite, our shadow and darkness. 😖Therefore, more and more, we must devote ourself to observe, acknowledge, accept and heal those shadows and darkness. 💪 And compassion and the connection to our heart is the foundation and centre for this process. 🙏💚✨

The energetic heart centre 💚 has been mentioned in various philosophies, traditions, spiritualism, new-age, and esoteric practices such as the chakra system and Daoism. ☯️ In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the Heart is where the Spirit resides; therefore, a healthy Heart maintains a connection with our physical being and spiritual/energetic being. And this spiritual self within us connects to the universal energy. The Heart is also the centre of our mental, emotional and psychological beings so governs all the aspects of our psycho-emotional functions. The Heart is also where we receive love through the connection with other people as well as the universal love through the direct connection with the Spirit or universal source/God, whatever you want to name it. ✨✨

In Seiki Shiatsu, to connect to Seiki, you need to cultivate the connection with our heart first because Seiki, which means vital energy or internal healing force, is only felt inside our heart, and cannot be found by relying on sight or palpation. Seiki meaning 'life force or vital energy', is the state of primordial energy before it divides to Yin and Yang. Therefore, Seiki contains, transcends and unifies the two opposing forces of Yin and Yang, thus everything, Tao. ☯️ Therefore, it is essential that Seiki Shiatsu students develop the awareness of feeling their own heart and the connection to it by practicing meditation, bodywork and Qi-based movement exercises.

In Daoism, Mantak Chia explains that the highest virtue we can achieve is compassion. ☺️ And it is cultivated through the connection to our heart first, and then our heart connects to the universe. Hence, you experience the oneness of all existence. So in this state of oneness, you are the same as everyone else. There is no separation between you and the rest of others. The state of compassion comes from this experiencing of oneness with all the existence. Therefore, if some people are experiencing pain, you feel it as your own, thus you will feel the urge to help them. This state of compassion can only be achieved when you have mastered the cultivation of strength and self-love within ourselves first without relying on external sources. Otherwise, you end up mixing sympathy with compassion which are two different things.

Because the experience of direct contact to our heart can be only felt inside us but cannot be comprehended by the analytical mind. For example, you may feel it energetically and emotionally; warm sensation (Qi) emerges from your heart and spreading to the whole body, making you feel relaxed, satisfied, and appreciate everything in life. 😊 You may get the sensation of being filled with positive energy in your heart so that you are inspired to act in a certain way or just feel energised and healed. ✨

Just like the Daoist teaching, ‘Dao De Jing’ (Chapter One), says, ’The Dao that can be spoken is not a constant Dao. The name that can be named is not a constant name.’ So reading numerous books about the self-help, philosophies, spiritualism, new-age, esoteric practices and understating in words and memorising the description of it 📚 cannot automatically connect you with your own heart. It is actually the opposite; when you let go of your analytical mind, the heart feeling emerges. 💚

Some may be dedicated to practice some form of meditations and spiritual practices diligently to cultivate such a connection. Indeed, the Spirit cannot reside safely in our Heart when our mind is too busy thinking and occupied, therefore, stilling our mind and emptying chattering naturally lead to opening and connection to our heart. By making 'space' in our Heart, Spirit can enter our Heat, which gives us a sense of presence, genuine contentment and peacefulness, where universal love emerges, and where you experience oneness. That is the ultimate self-love. 🙏 💚

There was a time I did not respect my body and heart, so I chose to do the opposite of what they wanted and purposefully damaged them. I did not let myself express the pain, hurt, loneliness, and vulnerability when they felt and did not allow them to be heard and healed. I numbed and muffled them by forcing myself to do the opposite of what they desperately were crying for. I did not know any better way to deal with my pain, and that was the best I could do at that time. Then, those cries were pushed into the darkness and forgotten for a long time. Even though the damage was created many years ago, the invisible scar still remains today and rotting inside. They manifest in multiple physical or psychological symptoms haunting me, urging my consciousness to listen to the signals they send.

During this time, many of us might be forced to face our own hidden truth of who we are, which did not have much chance to be expressed before. All the layers which managed to cover our shadows to function in everyday life seemed no longer successfully doing their job. Many became deeply shaken, grown survival-mode and experienced a constant feeling of being on edge with fear and uncertainty. Whatever the issues we have already had might have heightened and pronounced more than ever. We have lost access to many of the things we usually do to distract ourselves. Thus, we could no longer afford to be ignorant of our inner truth, so we needed to start a conversation with ourselves deep inside.

I am grateful that I was given this opportunity to face what I have forgotten in my inner truth, reflect my past and heal myself deep inside, which has not ended yet. Healing is not only about receiving therapies, going on retreat, detoxing, and practicing diligently spiritual works like yoga, tai chi or meditations. Sometimes, it seems that when the right time comes, life gives us a chance to heal. ☺️
Are you experiencing any emotions and thoughts which you have been unaware started to emerge? Any feelings that you left behind? Have you been feeling unsettling, even chaotic or in agony for some reason or no reason? As the new world begins and we start a new, is there anything that needs to be ended or grieved? Spend some time to have a conversation with yourself in your heart, mind and body, feel whatever comes up and be present with it even if it brings you pain. Staying with and being present with this pain is the only way out of it. 🙏